Get Soaking WET with choreographers Karen Bernard, Marsi Burns,Rachel Cohen, Alice Teirstein, Deirdre Towers, and Janice Rosario
Company:
SOAKING WET
Get Soaking WET with choreographers Karen Bernard, Marsi Burns,
Rachel Cohen, Alice Teirstein, Deirdre Towers, and Janice Rosario
September 24-27 (Thursday/Friday/Saturday at 7 PM & 8:30 PM - Sunday at 2 PM & 4 PM)
Early Performances feature choreographers Bernard, Burns & Teirstein, Cohen, and Towers
Late Performances feature Janice Rosario and Company
West End Theater, 263 West 86th Street (2nd floor of Church of St. Paul and St. Andrew)
Tickets: $18
Reservations: 1.800.838.3006 or www.brownpapertickets.com
The always lively and bold Soaking WET series, curated by David Parker and Jeff Kazin, opens with September 24-27 performances, two shows daily, in the intimate and friendly setting of the West End Theater, located on the second floor of the Church of St. Paul and St. Andrew, 86th Street & West End Avenue. The early performances feature a variety of dance expressions by choreographers Karen Bernard, the team of Marsi Burns and Alice Teirstein, Rachel Cohen, and Deirdre Towers. The daily later performances will feature a full length work by choreographer Janice Rosario performed by her all-female company.
PROGRAM A: Thursday/Friday/Saturday at 7 PM; Sunday at 2 PM
KAREN BERNARD
"1993-1996 It Could Have Been Different," excerpts from four seminal Bernard works created between 1993 and 1996, performed by Donna Costello, Mersiha Mesihovic, Ryan Migge, Lisa Parra, and Stacy Lynn Smith. Bernard has unflinchingy used her own aging body for decades as a vehicle to alter the definitions of dance and dancer. In the early 1990s, her work shifted significantly, with a ripple effect on performance art still perceptible today.
Karen Bernard is a creator of solo dance and interdisciplinary performance and Director of New Dance Alliance. She performs, teaches, lectures, serves on advisory panels and has been awarded numerous residencies across the U.S., Canada and Europe. This cross-pollination strengthens an ongoing social dialogue among international artists. That commitment is fully brought to life in New Dance Alliance's Performance Mix Festivals.
MARSI BURNS and ALICE TEIRSTEIN
"Comin or Goin" finds two seasoned, mature dancers taking different looks, both comedic and sober, in hindsight and in-the-moment, with images of searching, losing and maintaining balance, exploring lost and found, and finding humor in confusion. The whimsical work has live text and recorded music by Bohuslav Martinu and David Denmitz. Noted Marcy Friedman, "(the artists') years of experience have deepened their powers." (Art Historian)
Marsi Burns most recently was commissioned by Dancing in the Streets to create a site-specific work for a Bronx park. She has performed as a solo dance artist in all variety of venues, including theaters, museums, galleries, parks, and on the street, collaborating with musicians, vocalists, visual and performing artists. Marci is also a member of Margie Beals Improvisation Dance Group.
Bessie Award winner Alice Teirstein is Founding Director of Young Dancemakers Company, which presents original choreography by NYC teens in free concerts city-wide. Her work has been presented on noted concert stages, at The Yard, and in acclaimed duets with Stuart Hodes. She has worked with Stephen Koplowitz, Zvi Gotheiner, Claire Porter and other choreographers. Alice designed and led the dance program at the Fieldston School for over 30 years, is a guest choreographer/dancer with Dances for a Variable Population, and a Teaching Artist for DTH's Dancing Through Barriers program.
RACHEL COHEN/RACOCO
"New Developments" is the premiere of a new tactile interaction of performers and paper, in a continued collaboration between quixotic dance-theater company Rachel Cohen Racoco and visual artist Stephanie Bach, performed to live music by composer/guitarist Lynn Wright. The fluid relationships between the paper constructions and the performers link architecture and the body, order and absurdity, and evolution and real estate.
Rachel Cohen, founder of Racoco Productions in 2003, is a graduate of Harvard U, where she studied dance and choreography with Claire Millardi. She also trained with Mary Anthony, Bertram Ross, and Carolyn Lord; mask and clown with Rafael Bianciotto and Mario Gonzales; and Action Theater with Ruth Zaporah and Cassie Terman. Cohen was a 2015 artist in the NYC Dept. of Cultural Affairs' Seniors Partnering with Artists Citywide.
DEIRDRE TOWERS
World Premiere of "Cross Currents," choreographed by Towers and danced by Elisabet Torras Aguilera, a native of Barcelona and dancer with Noche Flamenca, and Olsi Gjeci, an Albanian native currently a member of Trisha Brown Dance Company. Live music by composer/guitarist Paul Jared Newman and bassist Alexis Cuadrado. Two people of differing sensibilities and a shared past have a chance encounter. Both the music and choreography are inspired by the frequency that cultures collide in a city like New York, and by the freedom that individuals assume to swim at their own pace through the cross currents.
Dancer/writer/filmmaker Deirdre Towers had performed at various NYC venues, choreographed for Syracuse Symphony and NY Lyric Opera, and taught flamenco history for Maria Benitez' Institute in New Mexico. As Artistic Director of Dance Films Association, she produced the international touring Dance on Camera Festival (1994-2012), co-produced by the Film Society of Lincoln Center.
PROGRAM B: Thursday/Friday/Saturday at 8:30 PM; Sunday at 4 PM
JANICE ROSARIO and COMPANY
The all-woman ensemble will perform five works, created by Rosario in collaboration with the dancers, that explore a range of topics that are relevant to the human experience:
"Un-Becoming" investigates the process of letting go of preconceived notions, allowing for more personal development (premiere);
"Unlea(she)d" is a quartet about the complexities of womanhood. Rosario expresses the idea that much of women's identity is attached to sexuality, and deals with how women find anguish and strength in that identity;
"The Making Of," a solo about the process of creating art and the struggle and personal examination required to make sense of abstract ideas and deliver them clearly to an audience (premiere);
"In a Standstill," as the title implies, shows a mind in a state of avoidance in dealing with a problem, a state which allows no personal growth;
"Magnetism," premiere of a quartet about how one's internal state affects the selection of people in their lives and those relationships.
Native New Yorker Janice Rosario grew up surrounded by New York's vibrant arts scene, and studied classical ballet, as well as Horton and Graham techniques. She received scholarships to Ballet Hispanico, Boston Ballet School, and the Ailey School, and attended Hunter College, majoring in Dance. Her work has been presented at the Secret Theater, Triskelion Arts, John Ryan Theater, and Dixon Place.
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